How Transformational Leaders Promote Employees’ Feedback-Seeking Behaviors: The Role of Intrinsic Motivation and Its Boundary Conditions

Abstract

Feedback-seeking behavior is critical to employee self-change and self-improvement, which is conducive to the sustainable development of employees’ own knowledge and abilities. Drawing on self-determination theory, this study aims to examine the underlying psychological mechanism and the boundary conditions of the relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ feedback-seeking behavior. Data were collected from a large manufacturing firm in China, encompassing 415 employees, and subsequently analyzed employing SPSS 22.0 and SPSS PROCESS Macro. The results showed that employee intrinsic motivation mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ feedback-seeking behavior. In addition, the positive association between transformational leadership and intrinsic motivation was more pronounced when organizational virtuousness was high than when it was low. On the contrary, the positive link between transformational leadership and intrinsic motivation was stronger when job complexity was low than when it was high. Organizational virtuousness and job complexity further moderated the indirect effect of transformational leadership on feedback-seeking behavior through intrinsic motivation. Our findings offer a better understanding of employee feedback-seeking behavior by considering factors that may trigger and influence employees’ psychological motivation. In this way, this study contributes to the literature on self-determination theory and feedback-seeking behavior.